


East High Presents: MEAN GIRLS

by choose_your_emotions



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack Treated Seriously, Cussing, Implied Sexual Content, Kinda, Multi, mostly just suggestive dancing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21628966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choose_your_emotions/pseuds/choose_your_emotions
Summary: Welcome to East High's spring musical, Mean Girls!Featuring:- E.J. Caswell still being terrible- Ricky and Nini being couple goals- and much, much more
Relationships: Carlos/Seb Matthew-Smith, Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The cast list! (Note: Nini’s understudy is probably some random girl who probably won’t be mentioned.)  
> MEAN GIRLS: THE MUSICAL  
> “Cady” Heron: Seb Matthew-Smith (New name TBD)  
> Cady Understudy: Ricky Bowen  
> Janis Ian: Ashlyn Caswell  
> Janis Understudy: Nini Salazar-Roberts  
> Damian: Carlos Rodrigo  
> Damian Understudy: Eddy Bowen  
> Aaron Samuels: E.J Caswell  
> Aaron Understudy: Carlos Rodrigo  
> Regina George: Gina Porter  
> “Karen” Smith: Ricky Bowen (New name TBD)  
> Karen Understudy: Eddy Bowen  
> Gretchen Wieners: Nini Salazar-Roberts
> 
> God, this is a mess.

Carlos rushed past people to put up the perfect cast list. They only had understudies for the two leads this year, and Carlos was  _ loving  _ Miss Jenn’s idea for a “No-Limits” casting of Mean Girls. He knew this would be  _ perfect _ . And, even better, Miss Jenn let him star in it! As long as he had a co-choreographer, which was not great, but still good. His co-choreographer was Eddy Bowen, Ricky Bowen’s cousin who transferred for unknown reasons. They’re both Carlos and Ricky’s understudies, which Carlos was on the fence about but Miss Jenn was insistent on.

As he stares at the cast list, a small voice in the back of his head chimes in.

_ Get EJ out, and you can be Aaron while Seb is Cady, and Eddy gets the part of Damian that you know they deserve. _

Carlos is rudely (thankfully) shaken from that train of thought by Ricky shoving him. 

“Dude, c’mon, quit hogging and put it up already!” Ricky teases, an easygoing grin on his face that shows that the shove was not meant to nearly knock him over. 

Carlos rolls his eyes. “Patience is a virtue, Lover Boy,” He chides, taping up the cast list anyway.

Nini careens into Ricky’s side in excitement, already babbling about how she felt confident in her audition. Carlos smiles and walks away, leaving the couple to no doubt be gross and gushy.

“Nini, babe,” Ricky says with a slight wheeze, “You did great.”

Nini smiles thankfully at him, and is about to say something when Eddy Bowen slides right into Ricky’s other side.

“Rich, my dude!” Eddy frowns at the paper. “They posted already?” They make a “whew” noise that is almost a whistle. “Damn.”

Ricky grins. “Babe. Look!”

Nini scans the paper. “Holy moly!”

“You guys are the plastics!” Eddy giggles. “Oh man, Rich, you’re gonna have to sing one of my favorite songs.”

“Which one?” Ricky asks.

“I don’t listen to it much. Just look up the mean girls musical. It’s the song before the first ‘Someone Gets Hurt,’ which is what Gina’s gonna sing,” Eddy says with a devilish grin. They skip off, leaving Nini and Ricky to calmly walk after them, hand-in-hand.

“Do you know what song they’re talking about?” Ricky asks.

“No, actually. I don’t know much about the musical of Mean Girls.”

Ricky frowns and pouts slightly. “Guess I’ll have to look it up again. I can’t study this movie, can I?”

Nini giggles. “No, honey.”

“Damn.”

Later that night, Nini’s phone buzzes with a call from Ricky. She answers with a confused “Ricky?”

“Uh… Hi. I- um. I looked up that song Eddy was talking about,” Ricky replies, sounding bashful. 

“Oh? What’s it called?”

“It’s called s…” Ricky fades into something inaudible. 

“Huh?”

“Can I just text it to you?”   
  


“Sure, honey,” Nini says, slightly concerned. A few moments of silence later, her phone buzzes. 

She takes her phone away from her ear to look at the text and barely contains a snort when she sees what Ricky texted her.

“What?” She asks over the phone.

“I’m serious!” He complains. “That’s the song title. The actual song is worse!” His voice goes quiet. “Does she really expect me to sing  _ that _ ?”

“Honey, if you’re really uncomfortable, you can talk to Miss Jenn,” Nini comforts. “And Carlos will probably be open to making the choreo mild, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I-” Ricky sighs. “I just don’t want anyone to judge me.”

“Ricky, no one’s gonna judge you for playing your part. Eddy, Carlos, Miss Jenn and I will deck them if they are.”

Nini smiles as she hears Ricky giggle over the phone.

“Thanks, Nini.”

“No problem, sweetheart.”

She hears a choking sound over the phone. “Ricky? You okay?”

“Um.” It still sounds pained, and he clears his throat again. Sweetheart?”

“I like calling you cute names. I’ve been testing them out, since you seem to like honey. No dice?”

“No!” He says hurriedly. “No, no, I, um- I like sweetheart.” He mumbles.

Nini grins. “I’ll see you tomorrow, sweetheart.”

“Bye!” Ricky squeaks out before hanging up.

Nin’s grin widens.

* * *

The next few weeks of rehearsal go by. Carlos instructed Ricky to not play “Cameron” (as he’s named Karen) as a femme character, but rather with his own masculine touch. This made Ricky tilt his head in confusion.

“Just use your own mannerisms,” Carlos said tiredly. “We’ll tweak character from there, ‘kay?”

Ricky nodded in understanding, and rehearsal continued on without a hitch.

Until today.

The callboard (a blog that Carlos made in frustration halfway through the first week) reads as follows:

CALLED: Ricky Bowen

WORKING: Choreo/Song

2:15-3:50

“Oh no.” Ricky begins to panic.  _ Why would they call me for almost two hours? Why just me? Is it for the- the song?  _

“Sweetheart, it’s gonna be fine,” Nini reasons. “You won’t have anyone to judge you. We wouldn’t, anyway.”   
  


As usual, Ricky’s heart melts and his brain short-circuits as soon as Nini calls him “sweetheart.”

“Um, yeah,” He says, intelligently.

* * *

When he gets to rehearsal later that day, it’s just Carlos, with his phone and his Bluetooth speaker.

Ricky puts his backpack in the corner and takes a deep breath.

“Ricky,” Carlos says from the other side of the room. He whirls around to see Carlos smiling kindly.

“Miss Jenn told me that you were a little concerned about this number,” Carlos said. “I thought you’d like to have some practice before we add anyone else in.”

Ricky sighs. “Thank you, ‘Los.”

Carlos grins. “No problem. Now!” He claps his hands and turns to his phone, and fiddles with something.

“‘Sexy’ is meant as a girl power anthem, but, since you’re Cameron, that doesn’t quite work.” Carlos explains, turning away from his phone. “So, we’re taking the approach of Cameron embracing the more ‘feminine’ side of sexy, inspired mostly by Regina’s confidence in herself.”

Ricky nods. He can get behind that. “Does that mean I have to like… Twerk?”

There’s a beat of silence before Carlos bursts out laughing. “No, Ricky. You can if you want, I guess.”

“Oh,” Ricky replies, his cheeks heating with embarrassment. 

“You’re fine, dear,” Carlos giggles. “Okay. First, we’ll learn the choreo. Would learning it to lyrics or beats be more helpful?”

Finally, 3:50 rolls around, and Ricky can finally take a break from dancing. He never sang when he was dancing, and he’s already out of breath.

“Okay,” Carlos says. “We’re taking a half hour after your ten for dinner. After that, we’re staging the other half of ‘Sexy.’” Do you wanna keep practicing with everyone else?”

Ricky stops. He takes a deep breath. This would mean more practice, but more practice means that everyone would see the choreo.

He lets his deep breath out. “I do.” 

Carlos raises his eyebrows. “Might as well get it over with,” Ricky chuckles awkwardly. 

“I’ll do it with you,” Carlos promises. Ricky smiles thankfully.

Ricky's forty-minute break goes back seemingly faster than he can blink, and now it's time for everyone to learn their part of the number.

“Alright, people!” Carlos claps his hands. “We’re running ‘Sexy,’ so we’ll need everyone that’s called.”

There’s a few scattered giggles, but everyone stands in the middle of the rehearsal room. Ricky sits in the middle of the rehearsal couch as he waits for everyone else to go to places, and he thanks whatever god is up there that Eddy isn’t there to mock him, since they’re working on “It Roars” with Seb.

“We’re gonna run the Plastics’ part first, so everyone just gets to watch and we’ll use their choreo for entrance points for everyone. Capiche? Great. Spread out! Gina, Nini, each of you on one side of Ricky!” Carlos barks.

“This should be interesting,” Gina snarks as she and Nini sit down.

Nini lays a hand on Ricky’s knee. He smiles at her. Carlos walks up to them.

“Instrumental or no?”

Ricky takes a deep breath. “Try instrumental.”

Carlos nods. “Okay. We can stop at any time, Ricky.”

Ricky nods and smiles. Carlos goes to his station, fiddles with his phone, and then the music starts. 

Ricky sighs, and places his head on Nini’s shoulders. He giggles as a chime dings.  _ Cameron time!  _ “Hi,” He says to Nini.

“ _ If I could change the world, I’d make it Halloween. Every single day.”  _ Ricky lowers his head onto Nini’s lap and kicks a foot onto Gina’s.

“ _ And also have world peace!”  _ He sits up. “ _ Maybe world peace should be first. World peace and then Halloween.  _ Hang on, lemme start over.”

The ensemble giggles. As the music plays again, Ricky notices EJ.  _ Oh fuck. _ Ricky can’t describe how EJ’s face looks, and as he’s contemplating it, the chime sounds.

_ Fuck you, E.J, I’ve got to act. _

“Hi,” He giggles at Nini again. She’s grinning at him.

“ _ If I could change the world, I’d make us have world peace and also Halloween. Every single day.”  _ He lowers back into his position on Nini and Gina’s laps. “ _ On Halloween, you can pretend to be someone else. It’s like the Internet, only in person and with candy!”  _ As he continues, Ricky slowly starts to sit up and face Gina. As he sings the last line, he starts to stand up. Then the music kicks in, and it’s time for choreo.

“ _ When you are the hot one, it’s a full-time gig. Looking like what people wanna see.”  _ Thankfully, the choreo is simple, and is mostly just a lot of hip swishes, body rolls, and pushing his hair back in an attempt to look much cooler than he actually is. The rest of the dance goes off without a hitch, and he was even able to sing all the words.

He also nailed his “drop it low” (as Carlos called it), which had several of the cast whoop. 

He and Carlos also agreed on changing a few lyrics at the end, since he was making it a male role. Instead of saying “I expect to run the world in shoes I cannot walk in,” Ricky says    
“Shirts I cannot talk in,” and he ends with saying “you can be who you want, and sexy.”

As he belts out his last note and collapses onto Nini, as part of his blocking, the rest of the cast is clapping and cheering wildly.

“Damn, Ricky!” One of the ensemble girls cheers. “Get it, boy!”

Ricky giggles breathlessly and grins. He can’t stop grinning. God, what a weight off his chest. He turns to Nini, who’s been silent. Ricky finds his girlfriend staring at the spot he was, with her mouth partly open. 

“Babe?” He asks. 

Nini breaks out of her trance, turns to Ricky, and promptly kisses him hard. He nearly falls back with the force of it, but he responds back gladly. 

Wolf whistling and Carlos’ two sharp claps break them away from each other. 

They’re both blushing as Carlos speaks. “If you lovebirds are done, the Plastics aren’t needed right now. In fact, you can probably go home, because I doubt we’ll get to run it all again. Check in with Miss Jenn if you go.”

Gina scoffs and moves to the break area. Ricky and Nini grab their backpacks and head to Miss Jenn’s office, giggling.

“So…” Ricky hums on their way. “D’ya think I was-” He waggles his eyebrows exaggeratedly. “Sexy?”

“Shut up!” Nini shoves him with a furious blush on her face. 

Ricky laughs as they round the corner into Miss Jenn’s office. 

They stop laughing as they find EJ already there, avoiding looking at both of them. 

Miss Jenn sighs. “Hello, Ricky. Hello, Nini. Were you two looking for something?” She asks, not unkindly, but she’s definitely frustrated. 

“Uh, Carlos said to check with you before we leave,” Ricky replies. 

“He said we’re done,” Nini pipes up.

Miss Jenn nods. “Well, if Carlos is done with you two, you can head off. See you tomorrow!”

Ricky and Nini nod, and exit the office. Ricky considers lingering by the office to see what EJ was talking to Miss Jenn about, but Nini pulls him away to whisper in his ear.

Ricky grins at her as they run off giggling. 

They’ll find out tomorrow.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An important note: I am 17! These kids are my age! :)
> 
> Please give me ideas! I really love this idea, but I don't exactly know where to take it.
> 
> Let me know what you'd want to see!

They’re rehearsing “Revenge Party” and “Fearless” today, and Ricky is beyond excited.

He’s already listened to both of them, and they’ve got to be his favorite songs so far, hands-down.

When he arrives, he immediately takes his spot next to Nini and waits for Carlos to call start. 

A few moments later, Carlos is doing his normal double clap, and it’s time for rehearsal to start.

“Alright, I’d like everyone to get in a circle, please,” Miss Jenn instructed. “We have some unfortunate news.”

Ricky frowns. He and Nini look at each other, and then Ricky looks to Carlos and Eddy. He doesn’t think either of them are going to give anything away before Miss Jenn says anything, so he supposes it’s useless.

_ But what happened? _

Before he can think about it more, Miss Jenn speaks again.

“Due to some…  _ personal issues, _ our, ah, dear cast member E.J. Caswell has elected to drop out of the show entirely.”

Silence washes across the room.  _ Why would  _ E.J, _ of all people, quit? _

“Since he was playing Aaron, this will require a shift of sorts. Carlos,” Miss Jenn turned to him. “You will be taking on the role of Aaron Samuels. Eddy, you will step up into Carlos’ spot as Damian and understudying Aaron.”

Carlos looks like he's attempting to outshine Seb with his smile (who is also smiling) and Eddy looks both very excited and terrified at the same time

Ricky supposes that they really shouldn't be so happy about E.J quitting, but no one really likes E.J. Not even Miss Jenn does.

Miss Jenn assigns another male ensemble member to be Eddy’s replacement as the Damian understudy, but Eddy is still Ricky’s understudy. Once Miss Jenn finishes talking, almost the entire cast is talking to each other, trying to figure out why E.J. quit.

“Do you think that’s why we saw him in her office yesterday?” Ricky asked.

“Probably,” Nini replied. “But that doesn’t really explain why, right?”

“Was it-” Ricky looks down at his lap. “Do you think it was because of- me?”

Nini looks confused, and opens her mouth to say something.

“Alright!” Carlos does his classic double clap before Nini can say anything. The noise quiets almost immediately. “We’re going to add the leads into Revenge Party choreo we learned yesterday, and then we’ll transition into learning Fearless.”

Ricky doesn’t do much in Revenge Party other than follow Gina and Nini around, so Revenge Party goes fine for him. During the rehearsal, he’s mostly watching the others. Eddy practically has Damian’s lines memorized already, Ashlyn is visibly having an amazing time playing Janis, and Seb is absolutely  _ nailing  _ being Cade (“Cady”). The Ensemble is not playing around this spring, and they’re a lot bigger than HSM was. Ricky was nervous about that at first, but he’s really loving it now.

Finally, it’s time for Fearless. 

“Remember everyone!” Carlos yelled before they started, “This song is about becoming who you really are. Bring out a secret part of your character!”

Ricky grins and raises his hand. “How?”   
  


“Play with it!”

And play with it he will. During almost the entire number, he tries to do couple-y things with Nini, but she just gives him a weird look and keeps singing.

At the end of the number, he’s fake pouting at her. (Okay, maybe it’s a little real.)

“What was that?” Nini whispered at him.

“Carlos gave me the okay to play Cameron and Gretchen as a couple!” He complains. 

“All Carlos said was to play with your character’s secret,” Nini shoots back.

“I was!” Ricky’s pout was definitely real now. “You just rejected me the whole time, babe.”

“Gretchen would  _ not _ like Cameron, honey.”

Ricky grins. “We can play that.”

Nini stares at him. Realization dawns. “Oh shit, that’s good.”

Ricky sticks his tongue out at her. “See, told you so.”

Nini smirks. “Sure, sweetheart.”

And, right on cue, Ricky’s brain melts into mush.

“I’m right here, you know!” Seb complains with a giggle.

Ricky just smiles at Nini and mindlessly hums. “Mm-hmm.”

“You two are disgusting.”

* * *

By the end of the week, act one is done. The weekend passes by fairly quickly, and it’s back to rehearsal with “Stop” and the first few act two scenes on Monday.

Eddy was a flurry of action all weekend, having not expected to  _ actually _ be going on as Damian or Cameron. For the entire weekend, Ricky heard Damian’s act one songs blasting from Eddy’s headphones.

When Ricky and Nini arrive at rehearsal for the day, Miss Jenn immediately corners them.

“Hello my stars!” Miss Jenn says with a grin. She started calling them that during HSM rehearsals, and they never had the heart to mention that it was a little biased because Miss Jenn had clung to the nickname like her unshakeable HSM addiction. “I wanted to mention that we’re separating one of Cameron’s lines and giving it to Gretchen in “Stop.” 

Nini immediately pulled out her script. “Which one?”

Miss Jenn bustles over to stand next to Nini. “Page ninety-six.” Nini flips frantically, and Miss Jenn points to a line once she reaches the page.

“From there to the end of that line, and you’ll also both say the solo word a few lines later,” Miss Jenn grins. “Nini will fill you in, Ricky.”

Ricky nods awkwardly. 

Nini hands him her script, and he scans the page. Nini is taking part of his solo in “Stop,” from the line “Stop, because I’m actually a human being…” to the end.

Ricky shrugs. “I didn’t have that part memorized fully anyway.”

Nini snickers, then sighs after a moment. “It feels weird to have you  _ not  _ say it, though.”

“Maybe we could both say it?” 

Nini stares at the page as if it will give her the answer. “Let’s try it with just me for today. If it still feels weird, I’ll talk to Miss Jenn.”

Ricky kisses her on the cheek, and hands her back her script. “Sounds good, love.”

Nini scrunches her nose and shakes her head slowly as she accepts her script. 

Ricky grimaces. “That’s a no?”

Nini nods. “Leave the cute nicknames to me, sweetie.”

Ricky nods sagely. 

Then, Carlos is doing his double-clap and it’s time for rehearsal. 

* * *

They try out Miss Jenn’s version in rehearsal, and even Miss Jenn tells them to fix it.

“Just- figure it out. You’re smart.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated! Should I make any more?


End file.
